'Television adverts, eh?" That's the kind of three-word phrase that sets off a famous chat fandango. The conversation will kick off with a modern advert - probably something about loans and no-win, no-fee solicitors. After someone says, "We never used to sue anyone - I blame America", the conversation will move on to rubbish older adverts. "Ambassador, you're really spoiling us," someone will cheer. "And I don't wobble any more," the crowd will roar back. And everyone will enjoy themselves, and agree that adverts are terrible things, until someone says: "Well, they've got you talking about them, so they worked." No one in this conversation escapes being spattered in cliche, but at least it's fun. And the only person who thinks they're clever is the one killing the conversation.

It's not clever. The first time you hear "Bad adverts work because, well, you're talking about them" is usually from your mum, when it's thought-provoking. You ponder the power of branding methods; your entire role as a consumer is obliterated and rebuilt with a more cynical slant. After decades of introspection, you can pass this wisdom to your own children. And that is the one time you can legitimately say, "Ah, it got you talking though, didn't it?", without seeming like a conversation-pinching squib.

These cliches-in-waiting pop up everywhere - you can't refer to Les Dawson's piano skills without someone saying: "Actually, you have to be really good to play that badly." And you have to open a bottle of fizzy wine in the airing cupboard to prevent a battalion of samaritans clambering over each other to say: "Turn it from the bottle, not the cork." People queue up to say the first thing that their brain has been conditioned to squirt on to their tongue, and everyone has to pretend to be interested, or look like a pretentious, disaffected bell-end. But this is why old people are so grumpy - they've had every conversation we're having in a bleak wartime setting, and our frivolous modern take disgusts them.

What can we do to avoid becoming chatbots? Our brains work by association, and basic emotional responses are fired by triggers that we don't control. One solution that I've regularly employed is to become completely paralysed. There's nothing I can say now that hasn't been said a million times before in a thousand voices less regional and unmetered than my own.

I met a porn director once. The fact that he'd told me so easily indicated that he was proud of what he did, and probably worked it into a lot of conversations. "Penicillin? One of my porn stars had to take that once. I only say that because I direct porn." I'd had a fair bit of fizzy wine, but I managed to pinch off after an excited, "Oh, really?", and I pretended to still be chewing a lump of bread I'd swallowed five seconds before.

What should I say? "And they pay you for that?" No. "Do you get to see it going in?" would have been fine - if it was the 70s - and I had to fiercely resist asking why no one makes a porn film with a decent plot, because people would really watch it. Eventually, I commented on the delicious taste of the bread I'd just mimed swallowing. Not a predictable response, but one that did make me look like a senseless sitcom mother, who instantly responds to a daughter's pregnancy by producing a freshly roasted joint of beef.

So you can either be a spasm-fuelled brain-trumpet who says "Computer says no" every time you see a piece of misbehaving technology, or proclaims "One of my five-a-day!" as you raise your seventh glass of fizzy wine. Or you can cripple yourself with the need to create new and exciting responses to every experience humans can have.

Frankly, neither's ideal; so why not settle on a lazy compromise? If you feel like your first instinct is too obvious, simply shut up until your brain gets embarrassed enough to offer you something else.

Just say the second thing. Not the third thing - that'd be like trying too hard, and you'd end up being the kind of uncomfortable person who says "salutations" instead of "hello". Just say the second thing you think of. It won't always work, and sometimes people will ask you what the hell you're on about. But anything's got to be better than accidentally quoting Little Britain.